A wide variety of cases and bags are available for carrying from place to place all manner of articles such as instruments, portable electronic apparatus, tools, clothing, etc. Since the invention herein described is useful in association with almost any of this type of article, such cases and bags will be referred to herein for convenience by the generic term "luggage".
Since the function of the luggage is to manually carry portable articles, handles are almost invariably secured to the luggage for lifting and conveniently carrying them. One form of handle is a strap of flexible material preferably made from heavy fabric strapping. The ends of such handle straps may be either permanently or detachably fastened to the luggage. Such straps may be relatively short to be grasped and held by the hand of a person or may be of sufficient length to enable the luggage to be carried by the shoulder.
The invention herein described relates to luggage tote-straps which may be adjusted to the two different lengths so that the luggage may be carried either by the hand or by the shoulder. Such straps that are in common use comprise two segments of strapping, a short one which is secured at one end to the luggage and is provided with a simple slide buckle fastened to the other end and a long strap also secured to the luggage and trained through the buckle to secure against relative movement by friction of the two segments of strap together. When no tension is imposed upon the tote-strap, it may be adjusted to either hand or shoulder length by sliding the long segment through the slide buckle to lengthen or shorten the tote strap. Because the segments of the strap that engage each other and the buckle must be manipulated to disengage these parts sufficiently to eliminate friction when the long portion is pulled through the buckle to provide a tote-strap of hand or shoulder length, stress within the strap handle must be completely relieved in order to make this adjustment. This requires a substantial amount of time and effort and, when the tote-strap has been shortened to hand-carrying size, a long excess of the large segment is left dangling loose.
The object of the present invention is to provide a totestrap which can be almost instantaneously converted from the short hand grip length to shoulder length and vice versa. The entire strapping is contained within the tote-strap assembly with no loose end dangling. The three passes of strapping are within and a part of the tote-strap at both the hand and the shoulder settings. Pads may be provided for both the hand and shoulder at the respective settings.